Since you’re reading here, you already know the purpose behind homeschool blogs. They can entertain, inform, encourage, and inspire. We’re glad you stop by The Homeschool Post for a healthy dose of all of those things.

But why should you personally start your own blog? You might feel that the blogosphere is already a very big place and you have nothing to contribute. It’s true there are many blogs out there, but it’s not true that you don’t have your own personal contribution to make. I have found new blogs to read and enjoy every year through the HSBA Awards. Each blogger brings their own unique perspective to the topic of homeschooling.

Here are 5 good reasons why you should start blogging about your homeschool experience (or continue blogging when you feel discouraged):

It’s free! You have nothing to lose by starting a blog on Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, or other free blogging platform. The design doesn’t have to be fancy. You can get started immediately, too.

Accountability and record keeping. For those who live in regulated states, a blog can help keep track of those projects you might forget when filling out your paperwork. It can provide a timeline of learning and help you assemble a portfolio for review. If you’re like me and get easily distracted by the urgent to-do lists, it also keeps you accountable to actually finish some projects that get put aside from time to time.

It can become a family keepsake, like a homeschool yearbook. Having a blog can help you remember to take more pictures, get them uploaded, and put them together in an online/digital yearbook format for your kids. The archive is automatically kept for you through the years and can be really fun to look back through. There are also options to actually print your blog in book format if you choose.

Blogging provides a way to actively participate in the online homeschool community, especially for those who don’t have local options available to them. There are groups on Facebook, blog hops, , carnivals, curriculum reviews, and more to provide interaction with fellow homeschoolers. We can all learn from each other!

Validation. Ever feel alone in your homeschool journey? Overwhelmed by all the pressures and expectations as wife, mom, teacher, housekeeper, cook, and so on? Blogging about it and reading about on other blogs can help put things in perspective and make you feel less alone. When someone leaves a blog comment to let you know you struck a chord with them or they like your ideas and are going to try them in their homeschool, it’s often like a virtual hug or high-five. That’s not something homeschool moms get on a regular basis for doing what we do.

I'm a reader, writer, dreamer, wife, and homeschooling mom of 3 girls. We take a relaxed, eclectic, Charlotte Mason-leaning, Montessori-ish, literature-rich, delight-directed, almost unschooling-at-times approach to learning. Lots of unit studies, field trips, and lapbooks, too. I like to blog about our learning adventures (plus faith and encouragement) at Embracing Destiny.

Everyone knows that Pinterest is a great visual organizer for recipes, crafts, and DIY ideas, but are you using it to its full potential for homeschooling?

Pinterest has become a favorite tool for many homeschool families, including some of our team here at The Homeschool Post. We’ve collected some of our best tips and ideas for homeschooling with Pinterest to share with you today:

Davonne shares some ideas for organizing your thoughts and project ideas on Pinterest in her post, Pinterest Organization.

Are you homeschooling with Pinterest? Leave us your ideas in the comments or link up your blog posts in our Homeschool Blog and Tell!

I'm a reader, writer, dreamer, wife, and homeschooling mom of 3 girls. We take a relaxed, eclectic, Charlotte Mason-leaning, Montessori-ish, literature-rich, delight-directed, almost unschooling-at-times approach to learning. Lots of unit studies, field trips, and lapbooks, too. I like to blog about our learning adventures (plus faith and encouragement) at Embracing Destiny.

You may vote once PER DAY (in ALL categories) per device or computer. If you have 10 computers and 4 smart phones, lucky you! If you canvas your neighborhood and ask every neighbor to use their computers, too – more power to ya!

Don’t send duplicate votes per day on the same cell phone in different hot spots or from the same computer or laptop. We reserve the right to erase ALL votes from an offending device or computer.

You don’t have to vote on everything at once. You can vote for one category and come back later for the rest.

If you click on the DOT, it will vote. If you click on the BLOG NAME, you can go to the site.

Once you vote, you can’t SEE the rest of the nominees any more (or click to go to their blogs) – so please do your browsing BEFORE you vote. We will list these again after the awards are over for your convenience (either in a post or page), so don’t worry – you’ll get to see them again eventually.

The results will be hidden until the winners are announced.

Email us at thehomeschoolpost @ gmail . com (remove extra spaces) if you have any questions or problems

Please use our graphics for your pages if you were nominated and link them to THIS post! See below for the nominee graphic.

With the number of categories and nominees involved, there is a definite possibility of human error in the creation of the polls. Especially since two very tired humans (one of which who had just been through a hurricane) stayed up night after night to prepare them for you. Please let us know if any of the links don’t work or the blog names are misspelled, etc. so that we can take care of it as quickly as possible.

ALSO: You are welcome to go to the library or another public place to vote if you are having trouble on your home network.

Relax, have fun, and enjoy the easier half of the awards season! Just click and vote – how hard is that?!

The Polls will open November 4th, 2012 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time (PST) and will close on November 16th, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time (PST).

Additional info based upon some of your emailed questions (this section updated as the awards progress)…

Question: What is the youngest age for a teen blogger?

Answer: 12 (and winners must provide written consent by their parents to accept prizes) For more information, see our Legal Page and our Awards Update Page.

Question: What constitutes a NEW blog?

Answer: The blog must have been created DURING or AFTER the last award season. Technically, that means after September 2011.

Question:Are people able to win in more than one category?

Answer: No.
If someone wins more than one category, we go in and see how many votes they got in each category and they get to keep the category where their votes were the highest. The runner up takes the other category. We do this so that we can make sure that prizes go to as many bloggers as possible. This is another reason we make the results hidden until the winners are announced. We don’t want anyone to FEEL like a runner up, even if they were one. Nor do we want to see smaller bloggers watching larger bloggers win by huge margins. This is supposed to be fun and enjoyable – not a popularity contest that makes people feel bad.

Question: Why is my blog or the blog I nominated not showing up on the voting lists?

Answer:
1. Your blog may not have qualified because it might not have met rule requirements/was not matched up properly with the category you were nominated in.

2. It also might have been entered incorrectly in to our Google Doc by the person that nominated you – if we were unable to click through the URL, the blog was left off of the voting polls.

3. It might have also been that your blog was not current (blogs that didn’t have current posts from August 2012 and forward were deleted from the nominations).

4. Were you a homeschool graduate? If you moved on to pursue other adult topics and hardly mention homeschooling any more, chances are you were either moved to the teen category if your blog had plenty of homeschooling posts, or possibly left out entirely if we couldn’t find that you were a homeschooler by browsing.

5. Or, may be your blog really doesn’t mention homeschooling anywhere easy to find. We looked in sidebars, on about pages, and even did searches on blogs that we could find search features easily on. If you mentioned homeschool somewhere, we probably found it.

6. OH, and if you nominated the same blog for every category – or more than one category, we most likely deleted your nomination for that blog. Rules stated that you can’t nominate the SAME blog for more than one category. Trust me, we used to get a LOT of people nominating the same blog in EVERY category. Even when the blog clearly didn’t FIT the category.

In a perfect world, we’d like to say that there weren’t any mistakes in our blog-checking/spreadsheet scouring, but it is also possible that we missed a couple of blogs that SHOULD be on the polls. Send us an email and we’ll look in to your particular case if you desire.

Please make sure that these requirements are met first:
1. Your blog is family friendly (check our Legal Page for a full-fledged definition of what we mean by that)
2. Your blog is current (if you haven’t posted in 2 months, chances are, we didn’t include you)
3. Your blog fits the category it was nominated in (if you are a DAD, you probably aren’t listed in “Best Homeschool Teen Blog”)

Founder of the Homeschool Post | Homeschool enthusiast with two high school teens and two preschooling tots in the Austin, Texas area. Heather has been homeschooling over 11 years and blogging over 8 years. You can also find her - be it a little less formal - at her personal blog, Sprittibee.com